WHO committee to go over Taiwan exclusion
The World Health Organization (WHO) is to raise the question of Taiwan's participation as an observer at the World Health Assembly (WHA), which opens practically on Monday, before one of its committees.
Taiwan happens to be excluded from the WHO but in the midst of escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing around the novel coronavirus, the administration of US President Donald Trump has repeatedly needed the island's participation at the WHA regardless of opposition from China.
Many heads of state, government and ministers are expected to wait the two-day virtual meeting on the pandemic that your WHO hopes will need a physical form later in the entire year.
Nearly 15 countries, including Belize, Guatemala, the Marshall Islands and Honduras, have written to the director general of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, asking that the question of Taiwan's participation be added to the agenda.
Asked repeatedly about them at a news conference, the WHO said that it only has the role of secretariat of the assembly and that only member states can decide to invite Taiwan or not.
In a document relating to the WHA agenda and dated May 15, Tedros said that the proposal was being "submitted to the overall Committee because of its consideration".
This random committee, made up of 15 countries from several regions, is usually formed in the beginning of every WHA and is responsible for deciding whether additional items could be added to the agenda.
As a result of pandemic, you won't be able to sit on Monday, delaying any ruling.
It will have to decide on the issue through the physical meeting that the WHO hopes to organise by the end of the year.
Nothing, however, prevents a country contacting Monday for a vote on the occurrence of Taiwan.
"WHA decisions usually are created by consensus," WHO spokesperson Fadela Chaib told AFP. "If a vote is regarded as necessary, given the constraints we face with a virtual WHA, a vote will be difficult, but not impossible."
Taiwan -- officially the Republic of China -- was a founding member of the WHO when the global health body was made in 1948.
Nonetheless it was expelled in 1972 a year after losing the "China" seat at the US to the People's Republic of China.
Between 2009 and 2016 Beijing allowed Taiwan to attend the WHA as an observer under the name "Chinese Taipei".
It lost that status with the election in Taiwan of President Tsai Ing-wen who views the island as a de facto independent nation and will not subscribe to Beijing's idea that it belongs to a "one China". -- AFP
